This is not a review. Why not? Because it's fast and furious, and a review (I've written them too) takes time and thinking and researching.
.
Last night I saw Weer at The Cherry Lane Theater in New York City. Natalie Palamides plays both the woman and the man in this comedy, each half of her body mascarading as a gender.
.
The word that came spontaneously to my mind after experiencing this show was propitiation. This according to the dictionary is the act of satisfying God's wrath against sin through a sacrifice. I was puzzled myself, and here's how I make sense of it:
I had definitely witnessed a sacrifice on stage, just as I might have seen one 2500 years ago on a Peloponasian stage. What was sacrificed? That was fairly easy to answer: comfort, modesty, decency, ego, elegance, feminine dignity, masculine dignity, all these things that constrain my life (OK, not so much masculine dignity unless it's to avoid challenging it) on a daily basis, and clearly also constrains the life of the other people in the audience from their reaction to the bacchanale going onstage. Her clown training comes into play here as well as a brilliant mind.
Palamides sacrificed all these goals we usually strive for particularly in the company of others, for our benefit, with generosity and courage, and an astounding flow of energy. She repeatedly doused herself in what must have been cold water and other unidentified liquids on a freezing winter night, she fell, she banged her head hard on the floor, she whined, she strutted, she stripped, she fondled her own breasts, she faked sex and orgasm.
